Quotes about invention
page 3

“Satanists are encouraged to indulge in the seven deadly sins, as they need hurt no one; they were only invented by the Christian Church to insure guilt on the part of its followers.”

Anton LaVey book The Satanic Bible

The Satanic Bible (1969)

Parting, Hurt

“in English: I do not consider myself a musician, rather a radar ready to pick up the symphonies coming from the sky. It's been like that since I was four years old and I hope it will continue forever. When I compose, any ingredient can be good, the problem lies in the proportions that must be harmonized. It's like the work of architects, you never invent anything.”

Vangelis (1943) Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock, and orchestral music

1989

Hope, Problem

“There has never been a just one, never an honorable one — on the part of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud little handful — as usual — will shout for the war. The pulpit will — warily and cautiously — object — at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, "It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it." Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers — as earlier — but do not dare to say so. And now the whole nation — pulpit and all — will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”

Mark Twain book The Mysterious Stranger

originally in The Chronicle of Satan (1905).
The Mysterious Stranger (1916)

Men, God, War, Secret

“It was good of Friedrich Nietzsche to declare God dead — I declare that he has never been born. It is a created fiction, an invention, not a discovery. Do you understand the difference between invention and discovery? A discovery is about truth, an invention is manufactured by you. It is man-manufactured fiction.”

Rajneesh (1931–1990) Godman and leader of the Rajneesh movement

God is Dead, Now Zen is the Only Living Truth (1989) YouTube video of the lecture http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBEIeRSLb8k <br class="br">Context: It was good of Friedrich Nietzsche to declare God dead — I declare that he has never been born. It is a created fiction, an invention, not a discovery. Do you understand the difference between invention and discovery? A discovery is about truth, an invention is manufactured by you. It is man-manufactured fiction. Certainly it has given consolation, but consolation is not the right thing! Consolation is opium. It keeps you unaware of the reality, and life is flowing past you so quickly — seventy years will be gone soon. Anybody who gives you a belief system is your enemy, because the belief system becomes the barrier for your eyes, you cannot see the truth. The very desire to find the truth disappears. But in the beginning it is bitter if all your belief systems are taken away from you. The fear and anxiety which you have been suppressing for millennia, which is there, very alive, will surface immediately. No God can destroy it, only the search for truth and the experience of truth — not a belief — is capable of healing all your wounds, of making you a whole being. And the whole person is the holy person to me.

God, Truth, Understanding, Dead

“God was always invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

interview published in Superstrings: A Theory of Everything? (1988) edited by Paul C. W. Davies and Julian R. Brown, p. 208-209
Context: God was always invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand. Now, when you finally discover how something works, you get some laws which you're taking away from God; you don't need him anymore. But you need him for the other mysteries. So therefore you leave him to create the universe because we haven't figured that out yet; you need him for understanding those things which you don't believe the laws will explain, such as consciousness, or why you only live to a certain length of time — life and death — stuff like that. God is always associated with those things that you do not understand. Therefore I don't think that the laws can be considered to be like God because they have been figured out.

God, Understanding

“Geometry was invented that we might expeditiously avoid, by drawing Lines, the Tediousness of Computation.”

Isaac Newton book Arithmetica Universalis

Arithmetica Universalis (1707)
Context: Geometry was invented that we might expeditiously avoid, by drawing Lines, the Tediousness of Computation. Therefore these two Sciences ought not to be confounded. The Antients did so industriously distinguish them from one another, that they never introduc'd Arithmetical Terms into Geometry. And the Moderns, by confounding both, have lost the Simplicity in which all the Elegancy of Geometry consists. Wherefore that is Arithmetically more simple which is determin'd by the more simple Æquations, but that is Geometrically more simple which is determin'd by the more simple drawing of Lines; and in Geometry, that ought to be reckon'd best which is Geometrically most simple. Wherefore, I ought not to be blamed, if with that Prince of Mathematicians, Archimedes and other Antients, I make use of the Conchoid for the Construction of solid Problems.<!--p.230

Drawing

“One after another they have closed the heavy iron doors upon him, and now they have him, as it were, bolted in with a lock of a hundred keys, which can never be unlocked without the concurrence of every key; the keys in the hands of a hundred different men, and they scattered to a hundred different and distant places; and they stand musing as to what invention, in all the dominions of mind and matter, can be produced to make the impossibility of his escape more complete than it is. It is grossly incorrect to say or assume, that the public estimate of the negro is more favorable now than it was at the origin of the government.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1850s, Speech on the Dred Scott Decision (1857)
Context: In those days, as I understand, masters could, at their own pleasure, emancipate their slaves; but since then, such legal restraints have been made upon emancipation, as to amount almost to prohibition. In those days, Legislatures held the unquestioned power to abolish slavery in their respective States; but now it is becoming quite fashionable for State Constitutions to withhold that power from the Legislatures. In those days, by common consent, the spread of the black man's bondage to new countries was prohibited; but now, Congress decides that it will not continue the prohibition, and the Supreme Court decides that it could not if it would. In those days, our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all, and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making the bondage of the negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, and sneered at, and construed, and hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it. All the powers of earth seem rapidly combining against him. Mammon is after him; ambition follows, and philosophy follows, and the Theology of the day is fast joining the cry. They have him in his prison house; they have searched his person, and left no prying instrument with him. One after another they have closed the heavy iron doors upon him, and now they have him, as it were, bolted in with a lock of a hundred keys, which can never be unlocked without the concurrence of every key; the keys in the hands of a hundred different men, and they scattered to a hundred different and distant places; and they stand musing as to what invention, in all the dominions of mind and matter, can be produced to make the impossibility of his escape more complete than it is. It is grossly incorrect to say or assume, that the public estimate of the negro is more favorable now than it was at the origin of the government.

Men, Distant

“I invent nothing, I rediscover.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Auguste Rodin: The Man, His Ideas, His Works, 1905, p. 60-61
Alternative translation:
I invent nothing, I rediscover. And the thing seems new because people have generally lost sight of the aim and the means of art ; they take that for an innovation which is nothing but a return to the laws of the great sculpture of long ago. Obviously, I think ; I like certain symbols, I see things in a synthetic way, but it is nature that gives me all that. I do not imitate the Greeks ; I try to put myself in the state of mind of the men who have left us the statues of antiquity. The schools copy their works, but what is of importance is to rediscover their methods. First I made close studies after nature, like "The Bronze Age." Later I understood that art required more breadth — exaggeration, in fact, and my aim was then, after the Burghers of Calais to find ways of exaggerating logically — that is to say, by reasonable amplification of the modeling. That, also consists in the constant reduction of the face to a geometrical figure, and the resolve to sacrifice every part of the face to the synthesis of its aspect. Look what they did in Gothic times. Take the Cathedral of Chartres as an example: one of its towers is massive and without ornamentation, having been neglected in order that the exquisite delicacy of the other could be better seen.
In: Andrew Carnduff Ritchie, ‎John Rewald (1945). Aristide Maillol: With an Introduction and Survey of the Artist's Work in American Collections. p. 19
Context: I invent nothing, I rediscover. And the thing seems new because people have generally lost sight of the aim and the means of art; they take that for an innovation which is nothing but a return to the laws of the great sculpture of long ago. Obviously, I think; I like certain symbols, I see things in a synthetic way, but it is nature that gives me all that. I do not imitate the Greeks; I try to put myself in the spiritual State of the men who hâve left us the antique statues. The 'Ecole' copies their works; the thing that signifies is to recover their method. I began by showing close studies from nature like The Age of Brass. Afterwards I came to understand that art required a little more largeness, a little exaggeration, and my whole aim, from the time of the Burghers, was to find a method of exaggerating logically : that method consists in the deliberate amplification of the modelling. It consists also in the constant reduction of the figure to a geometrical figure, and in the determination to sacrifice any part of a figure to the synthesis of its aspect. See what the Gothic sculptors did. Look at the cathedra! of Chartres; one of the towers is massive and without ornament : they sacrificed it to give value to the exquisite delicacy of the other tower.

“Those who live in a cold climate and in [northern] Europe are full of spirit, but wanting in intelligence and skill; and therefore they keep their freedom, but have no political organization, and are incapable of ruling over others. Whereas the natives of Asia are intelligent and inventive, but they are wanting in spirit, and therefore they are always in a state of subjection and slavery. But the Hellenic race, which is situated between them, is likewise intermediate in character, being high-spirited and also intelligent. Hence it continues free, and is the best governed of any nation, and, if it could be formed into one state, would be able to rule the world.”

Aristotle book Politics

Book VII, 7, 1327b http://books.google.com/books?id=QiqGAAAAMAAJ, tr. Benjamian Jowett (1908) <br class="br">Politics

World, Intelligence, Freedom

“The public of this country is so youthful, not to say simple-minded, that it cannot understand the meaning of a fable unless the moral is set forth at the end. Unable to see a joke, insensible to irony, it has, in a word, been badly brought up. It has not yet learned that in a decent book, as in decent society, open invective can have no place; that our present-day civilisation has invented a keener weapon, none the less deadly for being almost invisible, which, under the cloak of flattery, strikes with sure and irresistible effect.”

Mikhail Lermontov book A Hero of Our Time

A Hero of Our Time (1840; rev. 1841)

Books, Youth, Understanding, Learning

“The art of writing books is not yet invented. But it is at the point of being invented.”

Novalis book Blüthenstaub

Fragment No. 114
Blüthenstaub (1798)
Context: The art of writing books is not yet invented. But it is at the point of being invented. Fragments of this nature are literary seeds. There may be many an infertile grain among them: nevertheless, if only some come up!

Books, Art

“But after these, Pythagoras changed that philosophy, which is conversant about geometry itself, into the form of a liberal doctrine, considering its principles in a more exalted manner; and investigating its theorems immaterially and intellectually; who likewise invented a treatise of such things as cannot be explained in geometry, and discovered the constitution of the mundane figures.”

Proclus (412–485) Greek philosopher

Chap. IV.
The Philosophical and Mathematical Commentaries of Proclus on the First Book of Euclid's Elements Vol. 1 (1788)

Change

“The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood, for the unity of us all.”

Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker

The Great Dictator (1940), The Barber's speech
Context: I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone, if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness — not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another.
In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood, for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world — millions of despairing men, women and little children — victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say — do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed — the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes — men who despise you — enslave you — who regiment your lives — tell you what to do — what to think or what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men — machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate! Only the unloved hate — the unloved and the unnatural!
Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the 17th Chapter of St. Luke it is written: "the Kingdom of God is within man" — not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power — the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.
Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power! Let us all unite! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth the future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie! They do not fulfill their promise; they never will. Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people! Now, let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.
Soldiers! In the name of democracy, let us all unite!
[Cheers]
Hannah, can you hear me? Wherever you are, look up, Hannah. The clouds are lifting. The sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world, a kindlier world, where men will rise above their hate, their greed and brutality. Look up, Hannah. The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow — into the light of hope, into the future, the glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up, Hannah. Look up.

Men, Nature, Universe

“They were doing their best to live like people invented in story books.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast of Champions (1973)
Context: I thought Beatrice Keedsler had joined hands with other old-fashioned storytellers to make people believe that life had leading characters, minor characters, significant details, insignificant details, that it had lessons to be learned, tests to be passed, and a beginning, a middle, and an end.
As I approached my fiftieth birthday, I had become more and more enraged and mystified by the idiot decisions made by my countrymen. And then I had come suddenly to pity them, for I understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave so abominably, and with such abominable results: They were doing their best to live like people invented in story books. This was the reason Americans shot each other so often: It was a convenient literary device for ending short stories and books.
Why were so many Americans treated by their government as though their lives were as disposable as paper facial tissues? Because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their madeup tales.
And so on.
Once I understood what was making America such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done.
If all writers would do that, then perhaps citizens not in the literary trades will understand that there is no order in the world around us, that we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.
It is hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done. I am living proof of that: It can be done.

People, Books

“A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn't a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society. Cultural relativity is defensible and attractive. It's also a source of hope. It means we don't have to continue this way if we don't like it.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

Playboy interview (1973)
Context: I've often thought there ought to be a manual to hand to little kids, telling them what kind of planet they're on, why they don't fall off it, how much time they've probably got here, how to avoid poison ivy, and so on. I tried to write one once. It was called Welcome to Earth. But I got stuck on explaining why we don't fall off the planet. Gravity is just a word. It doesn't explain anything. If I could get past gravity, I'd tell them how we reproduce, how long we've been here, apparently, and a little bit about evolution. I didn't learn until I was in college about all the other cultures, and I should have learned that in the first grade. A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn't a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society. Cultural relativity is defensible and attractive. It's also a source of hope. It means we don't have to continue this way if we don't like it.

Truth, Faith, Hope, Way

“It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences human invention; it is only the application of them that is human.”

Thomas Paine book The Age of Reason

1790s, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794)
Context: It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences human invention; it is only the application of them that is human. Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles, he can only discover them.

Fraud, Science

““I invented auto in 83 and it had incompatibility problems, so I had to wait 25 years””

Bjarne Stroustrup (1950) Danish computer scientist, creator of C++

Conference Madrid 2019

Problem, Waiting

“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain. I do not dispute their right to invent social combinations, to advertise them, to advocate them, and to try them upon themselves, at their own expense and risk. But I do dispute their right to impose these plans upon us by law – by force – and to compel us to pay for them with our taxes.”

Frédéric Bastiat book The Law

The Law (1850)

Religion, Time, Law, Personality

“Be not, O Greeks, so very hostilely disposed towards the Barbarians. To the Babylonians you owe astronomy; to the Persians, magic; to the Egyptians, geometry; to the Phoeicians, instruction by alphabetic writing. Cease, then, to miscall these imitations inventions of your own. Orpheus, again, taught you poetry and song; from him, too, you learned the mysteries.”

Tatian (120–180) Syrian writer

Ante-Nicene Christian library: v. 3 p. 5
Address to the Greeks

Learning, Hostility

“There is not even a thought, or an invention, which is not common property, born of the past and the present. Thousands of inventors, known and unknown, who have died in poverty, have co-operated in the invention of each of these machines which embody the genius of man.”

Peter Kropotkin book The Conquest of Bread

Source: The Conquest of Bread (1892), Ch. 1 : Our Riches

Past

“In the past, there was a small leisure class and a larger working class. The leisure class enjoyed advantages for which there was no basis in social justice; this necessarily made it oppressive, limited its sympathies, and caused it to invent theories by which to justify its privileges.”

Bertrand Russell book In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays

Source: 1930s, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays (1935), Ch. 1: In Praise of Idleness, p. 13 https://books.google.com/books?id=CnlbMP_vBmgC&pg=PA13

Past, Justice

“Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing – fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by the help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"Fear, the Foundation of Religion"
1920s, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)

Religion, Understanding, Making love, Support

“It has been argued that the perfection of guns of great destructive power will stop warfare. So I myself thought for a long time, but now I believe this to be a profound mistake. Such developments will greatly modify, but not arrest it. On the contrary, I think that every new arm that is invented, every new departure that is made in this direction, merely invites new talent and skill, engages new effort, offers new incentive, and so only gives a fresh impetus to further development. Think of the discovery of gun-powder. Can we conceive of any more radical departure than was effected by this innovation? Let us imagine ourselves living in that period: would we not have thought then that warfare was at an end, when the armor of the knight became an object of ridicule, when bodily strength and skill, meaning so much before, became of comparatively little value? Yet gunpowder did not stop warfare: quite the opposite it acted as a most powerful incentive.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

The Problem of Increasing Human Energy (1900)

Imagination, Time, Perfection, Thinking

“It will hereafter be scarcely believed that an invention so eminently scientific, and which could never have been derived but from the sterling treasury of science, should have been claimed on behalf of an engine-wright of Killingworth, of the name of Stephenson — a person not even possessing a knowledge of the elements of chemistry.”

George Stephenson (1781–1848) English civil engineer and mechanical engineer

Dr. Paris, Life of Sir Humphry Davy (1831)

Knowledge, Personality, Science

“Though human ingenuity may make various inventions which, by the help of various machines answering the same end, it will never devise any inventions more beautiful, nor more simple, nor more to the purpose than Nature does; because in her inventions nothing is wanting, and nothing is superfluous, and she needs no counterpoise when she makes limbs proper for motion in the bodies of animals. But she puts into them the soul of the body, which forms them that is the soul of the mother which first constructs in the womb the form of the man and in due time awakens the soul that is to inhabit it.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIV Anatomy, Zoology and Physiology

Soul, Time, Beauty, Help

“Through art then, one finally establishes contact with reality: that is the great discovery. Here all is play and invention; there is no solid foothold from which to launch the projectiles which will pierce the miasma of folly, ignorance and greed. The world has not to be put in order: the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order, to know what is the world order in contradistinction to the wishful-thinking orders which we seek to impose on one another. The power which we long to possess, in order to establish the good, the true and the beautiful, would prove to be, if we could have it, but the means of destroying one another. It is fortunate that we are powerless.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Source: Miller, H. (1969). “Creation,” The Henry Miller Reader. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation. p.33.

Beauty, Art, Thinking, Reality

“O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of The Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

God, Death, Silence, Autumn

“The digital revolution is far more significant than the invention of writing or even of printing.”

Douglas Engelbart (1925–2013) American engineer and inventor

“We hold that the moral obligation of providing for old age, helpless infancy, and poverty, is far superior to that of supplying the invented wants of courtly extravagance, ambition and intrigue.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1790s

Age

“And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention, direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

As quoted in The Communist Manifesto (21 February 1848), p19-20.

Education, School

“The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude. No big laboratory is needed in which to think. Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind. Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

Source: "An Inventor's Seasoned Ideas", New York Times (8 April 1934)

Secret, Idea, Solitude, Thinking

“We have always sought explanations when it was only representations that we could seek to invent.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Original: (fr) On a toujours cherché des explications quand c’était des représentations qu’on pouvait seulement essayé d’inventer.
Source: Unsourced

“Art imitates Nature, and Necessity is the Mother of Invention.”

Richard Franck (1858–1938) German composer

Northern Memoirs, written in 1658 and published in 1694 along with another work by Franck, The Contemplative and Practical Angler

Art, Nature

“To think, analyze and invent are not anomalous acts, but the normal respiration of the intelligence.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Ficciones

Source: Ficciones

Intelligence, Thinking

“I'm not the marrying kind -"
St. Vincent snorted. "No man is. Marriage is a female invention.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Mine Till Midnight

Marriage

“Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself. In all matters of discovery and invention, even of those that appertain to the imagination, we are continually reminded of the story of Columbus and his egg. Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject, and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851) English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer

Introduction http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/frankenstein/1831v1/intro.html to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein

Imagination, Idea, Fashion

“To invent something, all you need is imagination and a big pile of junk.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Imagination

“I have much to teach you. Come and learn the art of war from the one who invented it. (Takeshi)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

War, Art, Learning

“All I'm saying is that it's shortsighted to blame TV. It's simply another symptom. TV didn't invent our aesthetic childishness here any more than the Manhattan Project invented aggression.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

“I invent stories, confront one with another, and by this means I ask questions. The stupidity of people comes from having an answer to everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.”

Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech author of Czech and French literature

Wisdom, People, Stupidity, Question

“Happiness is a myth. It was invented to make us buy new things.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Happiness

“People can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.”

James Baldwin book Giovanni's Room

Pt. 1, Ch. 1 - p.4-5 [Page numbers per the 2007 Penguin Books paperback edition.]
Source: Giovanni's Room (1956)

Parent, Lovers, People, Life

“An onion can make people cry, but there has never been a vegetable invented to make them laugh.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

As quoted in You Must Remember This (1975) by Walter Wagner, p. 175
As quoted in ...

People, Cry

“She's applying her lipstick; I've always believed that the universe invented the color red solely for Latinas.”

Junot Díaz book This Is How You Lose Her

Source: This Is How You Lose Her

Color, Universe

“Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents.”

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Romantic composer

Wisdom, Music, Thinking

“Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Starship Troopers

Source: Starship Troopers

Nature

“Be authentic to your dreams. Be authentic to your own idea about yourself. Grind away at your own minds and bodies until you become your own invention. Be Mad Scientists.”

Warren Ellis (1968) English comics and fiction writer

Source: Doktor Sleepless, Volume 1: Engines of Desire

Dreams, Idea, Madness

“When the mind is exhausted of images, it invents its own.”

Gary Snyder (1930) American poet

Source: Earth House Hold

“We are all created to be miserable, and that we all know it, and all invent means of deceiving each other. And when one sees the truth, what is one to do?”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

Truth

“To accept one's past - one's history - is not the same things as drowning in it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.”

James Baldwin book The Fire Next Time

Variant: To accept one’s past – one’s history – is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.
Source: The Fire Next Time

Life, History, Past, Season

“It is simply in the nature of Armenian to study, to learn, to question, to speculate, to discover, to invent, to revise, to restore, to preserve, to make, and to give.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

First Visit to Armenia (1935)

Question, Nature, Study, Learning

“It's wildly irritating to have invented something as revolutionary as sarcasm, only to have it abused by amateurs.”

Christopher Moore book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Source: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

“I had a feeling that Pandora's box contained the mysteries of woman's sensuality, so different from man's and for which man's language was inadequate. The language of sex had yet to be invented. The language of the senses was yet to be explored. D. H. Lawrence began to give instinct a language, he tried to escape the clinical, the scientific, which only captures what the body feels.”

Anaïs Nin book Delta of Venus

As quoted in D. H. Lawrence and Nine Women Writers (1996) by Leo Hamalian, p. 90
Source: Delta of Venus

Sex, Feeling, Sense, Box

“Mr. Franz, I think careers are a 20th century invention and I don't want one.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

Thinking

“When man resolved to imitate walking, he invented the wheel, which does not look like a leg. In doing this, he was practicing surrealism without knowing it.”

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) French poet

“Wasn't there a spell for making yourself happy? Somebody must have invented one. How could he have missed it? Why didn't they teach it? Was it in the library, a flying book fluttering just out of reach, beating its wings against some high window?”

Lev Grossman The Magicians

Source: The Magicians

Books, Flying, Happiness

“The truth is the thing I invented so I could live.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Truth

“Leave three Englishmen in a room and they will invent a rule that prevents a fourth joining them.”

Julian Fellowes book Snobs

Source: Snobs

“I hardly ever talk- words seem such a waste, and they are none of them true. No one has yet invented a language from my point of view.”

Aleister Crowley book Diary of a Drug Fiend

Source: Diary of a Drug Fiend

“If they invent a car that runs on stupid jokes, you could go far.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

Stupidity, Cars

“When the enemy has no face, society will invent one.”

Susan Faludi (1959) American feminist

“No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except literally to get out of hell.”

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director

Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society (1947)

Hell, Painting

“Whoever invented marriage was an ingenious tormentor. It is an institution committed to the dulling of the feelings. The whole point of marriage is repetition. The best it aims for is the creation of strong, mutual dependencies.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Source: Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

Marriage, Feeling, Strong, Dependency

“Europeans condemned Chinese foot binding, but any society that had invented the corset had a lot to answer for.”

Mary Jo Putney (1946) American writer

Source: The China Bride

“Human beings were invented by water as a device for transporting itself from one place to another.”

Tom Robbins book Another Roadside Attraction

Source: Another Roadside Attraction

Water

“Words must surely be counted among the most powerful drugs man ever invented.”

Leo Rosten (1908–1997) American writer

“I wonder if whoever invented World of Warcraft realizes it’s practice for sociopaths.”

Lisa Scottoline (1955) American writer

Source: Every Fifteen Minutes

World

“We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Source: Shadow & Claw

Truth

“Necessity is the mother of all invention.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

“Remembering is a great invention of the mind.”

Rodman Philbrick book Freak the Mighty

Source: Freak the Mighty

“Who am I? I'm just a writer. I write things down. I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure, I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow glass, but that comes later.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Love, Dreams, Future

“I tried to think about other things. I tried to invent optimistic inventions. But the pessimistic ones were extremely loud.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Thinking

“It strikes me that this may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others.”

Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending

Source: The Sense of an Ending

Youth, Age, Past, Future

“I want you to invent it. I want you to have that skill. To create your own reality. Your own set of laws. I want to try and teach you that.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

Law, Reality

“Cookery means…English thoroughness, French art, and Arabian hospitality; it means the knowledge of all fruits and herbs and balms and spices; it means carefulness, inventiveness, and watchfulness.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Art, Knowledge

“It's not enough to be American. You always have to be something else, Irish-American, German-American, and you'd wonder how they'd get along if someone hadn't invented the hyphen”

Frank McCourt book 'Tis

§14
'Tis (2000)
Source: ' Tis: a Memoir
Context: Why is it the minute I open my mouth the whole world is telling me they're Irish and we should all have a drink? It's not enough to be American. You always have to be something else, Irish-American, German-American, and you'd wonder how they'd get along if someone hadn't invented the hyphen.

“Scrabble was invented by Nazis to piss off kids with dyslexia. This is true, they proved this one. The word dyslexia was invented by Nazis to piss off kids with dyslexia.”

Eddie Izzard (1962) British stand-up comedian, actor and writer

Stripped (2009)

“The world is divided into those who screw and those who do not. He distrusted those who did not—when they strayed from the straight and narrow it was something so unusual for them that they bragged about love as if they had just invented it.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Love in the Time of Cholera

Source: Love in the Time of Cholera

Love, World

“The prince's robes and beggar's rags,
Are toadstools on the miser's bags.
A truth that's told with bad intent,
Beats all the lies you can invent”

William Blake Auguries of Innocence

Source: Auguries of Innocence

Truth

“Surely the Shadowhunter community must honor you and hold you in high esteem as a gentleman who has truly advanced their race. No, Henry said sadly. Mostly they wish that I would stop suggesting new inventions and cease setting fire to things.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Princess

Communication

“Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Capricorn

Tropic of Capricorn http://books.google.com/books?id=_HAhCxNs-QUC&lpg=PA176&q=&quot;Confusion+is+a+word+we+have+invented+for+an+order+which+is+not+understood&quot;&pg=PA176#v=onepage (1939)

“I don't know who invented high heels, but all women owe him a lot.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

As quoted in Her Inspiration : Secrets to Help You Work Smart, Be Successful, and Have Fun (2008) by Mina Parker
Variant: I don't know who invented high heels, but all women owe him a lot.

For women, Women